just friends

The other day my heart felt heavy but open. I was ready to spend the night contemplating the good things in life. I'd heard many good things about Paul Lisicky's new book, The Narrow Door, and thought I'd go feel big feelings at his reading at Community Bookstore.

***

The week after my friend Sally died, I started a zine about her. Collages mostly. I put them all together and stared and stared and then the dog knocked them over and then it didn't seem right and then and then and then my dad died and I still dream of her house almost every night.

***

After shuffling my way down 7th Avenue, I took my place in the small but crowded back room of the bookstore. The space was filling up with Lisicky admirers, many of who greeted the poet with hugs. While a clot of pretty poet boys decimated the wine, the rest of us settled in amid the fishy smell of store cat Tiny's food and the rustling of heavy coats. Writer A.N. Devers opened the evening with a short intro and then Lisicky began reading from The Narrow Door.

"It's weird," I thought as I cried into my companion's coat, "How sometimes a book comes right at the right time." How to reckon with relationships that are incredibly intimate and life-changing but not generally recognized as an important kind of love?  Even during this reading, a celebration of friendship, more audience questions were asked about Lisicky's ex, a famous poet, than about the subject of his book. I remember my frustration with trying to describe my relationship with Sally, everyone trying to name it with descriptors like "second mom" as if being friends was not enough for the grief I feel.

Devers pointed out that there are few books by men about their female friends, which is both true and too much to think about right now.

Lisicky talked a bit about the loss of his "sidekicks"--the people who know you the best and always want the best for you--to divorce and death. What does one loss mean in the midst of many? I lost my friend suddenly while my father was dying absolutely for sure. My friend lived boldly, but within many constraints. She was both incredibly inspiring and a cautionary tale. I wanted to spend years discussing life with her. Despite knowing her since I was eleven, I felt like our friendship was just beginning to take on a new form.

Because of her faith in me, a little piece of my writing is always for Sally.  That's going to have to be enough.

One of the problems I am having with what I am working on now is that none of it is right and all of it is right but most of it won't be right for long.

This is why writing towards understanding is so frustrating. It makes me ache when I can't find the phrase that unlocks the whole damn thing or the word that turns a sentence from working to singing.

I guess I gotta work and leave the songs for later.

your public face is broken

One of the things that I promised myself when I started this blog was that I would never be afraid to write about the complete shittiness of depression or grief. If you are wondering why I would be afraid then you have never applied for a job knowing that you will be Googled. Or maybe you've never has so few good days that you don't want to ruin one by thinking about why you have so few good days.

Here are two amazing pieces, posted yesterday, on what happens when life is something you suffer through rather than live. Improvising a Bone Graft by poet Nikki Reimer is deft examination of public grief and private pain. Let's just say that I identify: I loved my brother with a fierceness that is not ashamed to stand howling and naked in the middle of the road, and what I miss is the material essence of him. The only thing in the world that I want, and can’t have, is my brother’s arms around my shoulders, his infectious laugh, his shit-eating grin, his middle finger pointed at me in response to sisterly teasing. His “jerkface!” in response to my “jackass!”

Depression Part Two by Allie Brosh is both a hi-lar comic and the most apt description of chronic depression I have ever read: Months oozed by, and I gradually came to accept that maybe enjoyment was not a thing I got to feel anymore. I didn't want anyone to know, though. I was still sort of uncomfortable about how bored and detached I felt around other people, and I was still holding out hope that the whole thing would spontaneously work itself out. As long as I could manage to not alienate anyone, everything might be okay!

You might want to read the first part first. Check the dates of the posts to get a sense of the cyclical devastation even those who are treated experience. Wait, that doesn't sound funny at all! I promise you will laugh (or at least approximate the sound with your mouth).

All of this "coping," all of this "getting by," all of this "day by day" has turned me towards writing poetry. One of my open secrets is that I wrote poetry for many years, most of it lost now. The way that scraps of thought could be fixed by a poem was very soothing to me. I am soothed again by that now. Well, perhaps soothed is the wrong word, marginally satisfied is probably better. I can pin down the small truths and then let them rest.

I keep starting essays about grief and end up with poems. Maybe it is the sudden lack of perspective I am suffering from, but a poem seems like an option now in a way that it hasn't in a long while. I don't know how I feel about this except that any writing is better than none.

<<<>>>

Does what you write, or how you write it, change when your circumstances change? How?

I am back from Los Angeles. In celebration of that fact, and in opposition to the snow that is lazily falling like ho-ho-nothing-to-see-here, I submitted something that I've been working on for a while to a website I love. I got a response a few hours later, a sweet note saying that they didn't accept fiction, nice nice nice, the end.

Which I KNEW. I read it in the submission guidelines. I read this site every time I am on the internet. I know that they don't publish fiction. And somehow, somehow I convinced myself that sending in my not-poetry, not-memoir, in-between piece of fiction was a good idea.

Sometimes I really wonder, you know?

Click, read, buy

1) The Rumpus has been kicking it out 70s-Heart-style. So many of their offerings help me think better. Here are a few of my recent favorites:
The Throwaways by Melissa Chadburn
When Barbara Jean Was Missing by Rebecca K. OConnor
Night Shifts by Elissa Wald
Transformation and Transcendence: The Power of Female Friendship by Emily Rapp

2) In other excellent news, Roxane Gay, one of my favorite essayists, is now their essay editor. This can only mean good things.

3) Here are some books that I am looking forward to reading:
At the Mouth of the River of Bees by Kij Johnson--I've heard many of these stories on various science fiction podcasts and I hope that they will be as good on paper.
Baby Geisha by Trinie Dalton--I really enjoyed Wide Eyed in 2010.
Three Messages and a Warning Eduardo Jiménez Mayo and Chris. N. Brown, editors--Short stories from authors I've not heard about before, published by Small Beer Press. Sign me up.
Nurse Nurse by Katie Skelly--Being the jerko that I occasionally am, I never picked up Nurse Nurse while it was in minis. Now we can get the book from Sparkplug Books and support Skelly and a great press.
The Mountain Lion by Jean Stafford--NYRB rarely lets me down. Plus an afterword by Kathryn Davis, what could be better?

4) Dang, Red Lemonade has republished Lynne Tillman's Haunted Houses? I loved that book, especially when the characters kept going to the movies. If you aren't going to get it from the library check it out in this way with one caveat--if you buy the print version, expect the cover to be wimpy. Seriously, the pages of Zazen were creamy and strong, but the cover curled like dead leaf in the autumn of everyday toting. Come on with that.

5) I am working on two things right now that I am excited about. This is unusual and probably means that both are terrible writing. Still, finishing things is the main thing for right now.

What is your thing for right now?

                                                 

"a sweet stranger"

Have I told you how much I love the open letter? The open love letter especially. I've been working on one for several months now, to an author and artist whose work changed my life for the better. It's not a romantic thing, more like a fan letter filled with blood. Actually, if you've ever heard me talk about this woman before, you probably know the short version of my experience. The hardest parts of the letter, fleshing it out beyond the handful of short, sharp sentences that proclaim my gratitude, are taking more time than I thought they would. But what doesn't?

### 

I've linked to a ton of Sugar columns here. I've often thought of writing Sugar a letter myself, not for help, but to tell her how important her writing has been to me. It was Sugar columns that inspired me to start writing again for myself and to embrace failure as part of growing as a writer. Her words got me excited to do the hard and boring work and the decision to do so has made this year different from any other. Even though I am 98% sure that I know the real name of the person behind the pseudonym, the fact that Sugar will soon be revealed makes me really sad. Once her real name is given, she belongs to everything she's ever written, everything she has ever lived. As Sugar, she belongs to all of us and I selfishly want to keep her for myself.

Published on The Rumpus today is an open letter to Sugar from one of her readers that lays bare the influence that one compassionate writer can have. [Whoa, wait! It is not an open letter at all. Simply an essay from one regular Sugar reader to all of us. My mischaracterization is likely a case of simple projection. Sorry!]

### 

Friend of Try Harder, Amy Shearn, has a great essay about what her grandmother's letters to Martha Gelhorn meant to her as a writer: A Thousand Words: My Grandmother and Me. A few years ago, I got to see Amy read another piece about these letters. Both touched on the messiness and uncertainty of being a writer, how correspondence with an author you love can change you, loneliness and work and being a creator. Amy lived with those letters for a long while and I'm so glad that she shared her thoughts about them with me (and you).

Have you ever written to an author who inspired you? What happened?

*Photo from The NYPL Digital Gallery

-ettes

I got my first fiction rejection yesterday. This was just as expected, and strangely inspiring. While I wish that I had gotten some comments in my rejection, I understand that one can't have everything. The other two stories that I have been working on have absorbed the energy of that hard sell and might even be first-draft-finished this week.

###

oh.no.not.again

###

Speaking of making stuff, have you started work on your contest entry? Here are the details. Images of a full inbox are dancing about my head...

i am a house

After much crybabying-around I changed my password for the BPL and went a-holds-placing. This weekend I was rewarded with two books instantly on the hold shelves for me, proving yet again that I am either a resourceful lady sleuth or simply so out of step that I get what I want when I want it. (A good strategy for the urban brunette with many needs).

I walked and walked this weekend with Lynne Tillman's new collection Someday This Will Be Funny. The first story that I opened to, “The Way We Are,” is exactly the thing, my coping and not coping and living. It is also a story about going to the movies in another country. I am dipping in and out of the book, rationing it while I cook foods and clean corners and plan. To distract myself, I ran to the aforementioned shelves and got Haunted Houses by Tillman (1987) and seemingly the only freely had, non-library-use-only, non-The Hearing Trumpet copy of Leonora Carrington's fiction in English in NYC—The House of Fear. I took one of the houses, the haunted one, with me on the train and almost missed my stop because, really, who wants to get off in Midtown when you've got a good book and a seat and possibilities?

I am trying to write fiction, I am writing fiction, really for the first time these days. Since I've returned from Vermont I feel excited about trying new stuff, about failing and failing and finishing thoughts. It is distracting and fun and awful. When I feel like talking I talk too much and when I don't will stare at you all spooky. Don't worry, don't worry, don't worry, my mind is elsewhere.

haps

Sorry to ruin a Spring day, everybody, but I am hoping for rain. I want the grey clouds that are now bunching over Downtown Brooklyn to turn black and heavy and blow over this way. Which, of course, means that I've started my roof garden and that the hose is a situation. A frustrating, wet, non-working situation. A trip to the hardware store could probably fix that, but when will that happen?

I have fallen into a book recently sent to me by a small press. The world is recent past and I want to be there. I hope to write about it somewhere else soon. It is a love story and a sibling story--surprise!

The third thing, the third thing is that I owe you a letter. I really do. I promise to sit down this weekend and write you one.

Twitter has recently been absorbing thoughts like the above, but I wanted to pin them here this time. I am still unsure about Twitter--how it shapes my thoughts. As a delivery system, it's great, but when I post an essay like this one or this one, it is hard to say why they are important in just a few lines. However, with retweeting, the audience for such a pick is limitless--perhaps that makes up for it? I don't know.

At The Rumpus, I have a very short piece on the subject of Near and Far. Mine is on the second page, sitting right above some lovely art.

In terms of writing in general, these last few months have been different, better. I may not have the greatest ideas but the work has been coming easier and the results are more satisfying than they have been in a long time. In terms of grief writing, I have been experimenting with different forms and been surprised at what is coming out. This makes me hopeful for my upcoming zine project, which will be done, I think, by August. You seem a bit dubious; so do I.

In other writing news, it feels like the only place I can be compassionate is on the page. I hope this passes.

Mixt

Comics and librarianship comes together in this excellent post about CCS's Schulz Library by Caitlin McGurk. She talks about the history of their catalog and her newest project, using Koha to revamp the catalog and make it "more robust and 21st-Century." Besides all the details she provides about the project, a great help to me as a library student, this article shows what a dedicated community can do. The Schulz Library is for the students and it is the students that have largely created it. Fascinating!

Plus, check out the photos and illustrations in the post. So good!

&&&

This Dear Sugar column is about dating and love, but it also brings together two of my passions--smart pretending and the future. As someone who deals with, let's call them unhelpful, messages from my body all the time, I sometimes have to pretend that the day's challenges are worth it. I do this for my loved ones and friends and plants and home, but also for my future self--she needs smart decisions and good days to be the happiest and best version of me. I pull her together from everywhere--books, films, women I respect, dreams and good conversations--and make her real every day. If you tweak that scheme a little bit, you also basically get the blueprint for how I write. Shh, don't tell anyone my secret process!

&&&

Today I got a letter from an old friend with several small children. I could read the distraction in her lines--dropped words, glossed descriptions. I am so happy that took the time to write to me about her day to day. We don't live all that far apart from each other but our lives have diverged to the point that it is very difficult to get together or even talk on the phone for more than a few minutes. I miss her and must send off something exciting soon.

*Top photo by by Rudolf Eickemeyer from the NYPL Digital Gallery,Image ID: 92135; bottom photo by me

all those todays

Today I forgot to do every little thing on the list, crying and dreaming in equal parts. Nothing important got done, I think, but I’d like to believe that this neck-up action will lead to something akin to what Renee French talked about on her recent Inkstuds interview. She discussed how when she has migraines she can’t do anything but sleep and imagine lightly around a blocky world. Those flights from physical reality ultimately inform her work. It’s nasty and tiresome and painful, but she makes something out of it.

I just keep reaching in and rooting around in my guts and heart looking for a hold on any one irritant, something I can pluck out and expose on the page, pin down and examine until it dies and disappears. I want to reach out instead, and perhaps I should, but right now I am out of step with my people. Friends, near and far, are often mired in pits of things done and left undone and likely don’t have time for search parties and good cop, bad cop.

It takes me forever to lurch around my own mental landscape and find words. To find out if the way I’ve arranged stuff is worth keeping in any way and then move on. I’m working on something depressing but very important—a difficult position for someone like me, someone who flees from pinpricks but often ends up trotting straight into the woodchipper. Even though I hate them, I need the failures almost as much as comments and kudos and victories. Without them I can’t get to the good stuff and I’ve been avoiding failure for more years than I care to mention and, of course, only failing to do anything at all.

Shining a light on a wheel as it spins in place doesn’t tell you much, does it? So, how about I turn off the light and just listen for awhile?

Image from the NYPL Digital Gallery, Image ID: 1157702

in and out of my brain

There has been talk in my twitter feed about inspiration, so I thought I'd share some of my recent inspirations with you. I tend to accrete viewpoints and styles in large bursts, usually because of travel or several days alone, and therefore outside of the motions of the everyday. Some influences (Studs Terkel, Marianne Faithfull, sailors' attire) are longstanding, others last a month, a year, and usually lead me to other, better thoughts.

Inspiring now:
Radiolab
Maximus Clarke interviews William Gibson on Maude Newton
The Dear Sugar column on The Rumpus, #25 on
Final Girl, especially her reviews
Nature Illustrated: Flowers, Plants, and Trees, 1550-1900 in the NYPL's Digital Gallery

image from NYPL

I don't understand what is taking so long. I mean, I have several pens and ideas and yet that perfect, emotionally punchful piece just hasn't leapt from my fingers onto the edit pile. It's Sunday and everything. The weekend was over hours ago and the hard work is supposed to be done.

I find it hard to go from living to writing so I just end up doing something in between. I think it's called twitter.

Right now I am working on a zine for SPX. As far as I know it will contain no comics, but maybe that will change. I have several ideas in various stages of completion, none of which I am too happy with. Mostly this is about unhappiness. The problem is not only that SPX is so close, it’s that I don’t want to write this stuff. I don’t want to put myself anywhere near the still-howling chasm of my grief. This past week has already held too many snot storms and lingering illnesses.

Still, I am forcing myself to carry on with the work and complaining only to you, my internet.

How do you deal with writing things that are personally hazardous?

***

Being sickie sick sick has made me crave giant books. I ventured to Unnameable with B to feed my fever and picked up The Scar by China Mielville and Lorrie Moore’s The Gate at the Stairs. Browsing was shockingly unpleasant so we left shortly after purchase, but there were so many things I wanted to look at. Sigh. The Scar is the escapist treat I expected, with fewer frantic world-building tics than Perdido Street Station and the Iron Council and more talk of pirate libraries. The prim but observant main character’s perspective is great, especially for one in such a dulled state as I.

Today we found a family of wolverines in the hall closet. I thought I had heard noises for some time but always dismissed them as house settling or wind shenanigans. Then there was the scat. I saw a few bone-filled piles in corners and ignored them, seeing instead dust bunnies and stray charcoal. A few times I thought I smelled expressed anal glands.

So, we ask ourselves, how did this happen? What was our failing? Did we leave the door open to a pregnant interloper when carrying too many groceries? Did I forget to put away a fresh kill? Are they eating the paper towels? So many ways to blame ourselves for the impossibly inevitable.

Of course it is the season for coming in. Nesting is hard to resist even for the undesirable.

Let’s not forget that.

(via zooborns)

What could be better than a picture of a baby gibbon thinking about how to save the world?

Maybe some reviews?

3 Things Not to Do When You Can't Write

1) Sit and stare at a blank Word document for longer than 10 minutes
2) Tell people you have writer's block. They don't care.
3) Eat two lbs. of pasta

Despite appearances, not a Rastafarian dog abuser

To build on my last post:

Between the weed smoke wafting up through the floorboards and the howling dogs in the apartment above, I am having a little distraction problem in my workspace. I usually work at my desk in my book-laden bedroom or at my magazine and mail-strewn table. I sit in one of a few uncomfortable chairs--and they've got to be near a plug because the built-in obsolescence of my laptop's battery is in full effect. On a pretty day I get souped up by the sun, but recently the drear is getting to me. When I am writing, I prefer quiet. Let me tell you, the stimulating powers of avant jazz don't knock the words loose, no matter what some people think. But, if I am doing research or making a spreadsheet or something, it's talky podcasts all the way.

How do you do what you do?